Reviews for Featherless Chickens, Laughing Women, and Serious Stories

The average rating for Featherless Chickens, Laughing Women, and Serious Stories based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-03-29 00:00:00 Eugene Buggs This book highlights the important churchly process of 'discretio spirituum,' the discerning of spirits, for the middle ages when people were claiming divine visions and whatnot and people needed to know what to do with them. It puts the practice into interesting context, especially in terms of gender (everybody really was as sexist as we steriotypically think) and shows how by conforming to the rituals it established, Bridget of Sweden was able to accrue pretty impressive temporal power (while being, as Voaden puts it, a "Vanishing Visionary"), where Margery Kempe, "The Woman Who Wouldn't Go Away," made everyone mad by ignoring the rules. An interesting work. What's that, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), you say that "it is easier to raise the dead than to be constantly with a woman and avoid intercourse"? Not, perhaps, literally, yes?

Review # 2 was written on 2016-11-23 00:00:00 Arik Williams I've read this book as I have to write a paper about Cornelia. Yet I'm wondering if it's really the right book to read. It's called Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, but it's not really about her - or not so, as I imagined. Instead of Cornelia, we learn about the politics and philosophy in Rome in 2nd BC. And somewhere in the middle, there is Cornelia. Except from few new sources, there wasn't really much to her (just browsing through various sources taught me more about her). So for me it was kinda dissatisfying lecture.